Uganda’s hardline President Yoweri Museveni has warned citizens planning anti-corruption protests Tuesday that they are “playing with fire.”

The upcoming protests come after a wave of deadly anti-government demonstrations that rattled neighboring country Kenya where at least 50 people were killed in clashes with security forces, according to figures released by the National Commission on Human Rights.

Museveni, 79, who has ruled the East African nation with an iron fist for nearly four decades, said in a televised address on Saturday that the anti-corruption march will not be allowed.

“What right… do you have to seek to generate chaotic behavior? … We are busy producing … cheap food, other people in other parts of the world are starving… you here want to disturb us. You are playing with fire because we cannot allow you to disturb us…”, Museveni said in the three-hour-long wide-ranging address.

Many young Ugandans say on social media they plan to go ahead with the march to the country’s parliament despite the country’s police refusing to grant a permit for the protest.

The Uganda Police Force described the planned protests as “potentially anarchic” in a statement on Monday, warning it “shall not tolerate disorderly conduct.”

Some defiant youth protesters who plan to join the march on Tuesday have begun sharing their photos on social media, urging fellow citizens to remember them if they don’t make it home alive.

“Just in case I get abducted or I die in the march, you can use this (photo) for creating awareness. Otherwise, tell mum I played a fundamental role in saving my country! I know she will be happy!”, said one activist Ashiraf Hector on X.

Another wrote: “Tomorrow, very early in the morning, I will join my fellow young people as we march to parliament against escalating corruption in Uganda. We will come face to face with murderers and in case things go south for me, this is my official portrait.”

A group of lawyers and activists said in a letter on Sunday that the police could not, by law, stop peaceful protests.

“The police cannot prohibit a demonstration from proceeding but have powers to regulate it to ensure it takes place within confines of the law,” the letter said while urging President Museveni to “ensure that the constitutional right to assemble, demonstrate peacefully … is not violated with impunity by security agencies.”

Crackdown ahead of protests

Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine said on Monday he supported the protest which he clarified was “organized by the young people of Uganda” and not his NUP party.

Wine raised the alarm that his party’s secretariat had been cordoned off by security forces and some party leaders had been “violently arrested” ahead of the Tuesday march.

“The effort by the regime to clamp down and make it (the planned protest) look like an NUP initiative is meant to weaken it because they want to make it appear like a partisan matter,” he said in a statement on X.

Uganda grapples with widespread government corruption with an estimated Sh. 10 trillion ($2.7 billion) in public funding diverted each year, according to its anti-graft body, the Inspectorate of Government (IGG).

Last year, it scored 26 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index which ranks countries on a scale of zero to 100, with zero meaning “highly corrupt” and 100 signifying that a country is “very clean.”

“The thieves are parasites that must be stamped out,” Museveni said about his administration’s fight against graft last month, adding that his ruling NRM party “does not victimize anybody without proof (of corruption).”

“That is why some people think that the NRM is soft on corruption,” he said, stating that some corruption cases against public officials were being decided in court.

However, those agitating for a protest are unimpressed with the government’s handling of corruption, urging Ugandans to “#March2Parliament” on July 23 to “#StopCorruption.”’.

Some have also called for the speaker of the parliament, Anita Annet Among, to resign. She was among high-profile Ugandan politicians sanctioned by the United States and the United Kingdom for corruption earlier this year.

“Among is designated due to involvement in significant corruption tied to her leadership of Uganda’s Parliament,” according to the US State Department.

Among has pushed back against the sanctions, calling them “politically motivated” and claiming they were triggered by Uganda’s defiance of international pressure after passing a strict anti-LGBTQ law last year.

The European Union’s next meetings of foreign and defense ministers scheduled in August will be moved from Budapest to Brussels, the bloc’s top diplomat announced Monday, in the latest escalation of a spat between the union and Hungary over its prime minister’s stance on the war in Ukraine.

Hungary’s far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has ruffled feathers among EU leaders by claiming recently that the union has a “pro-war policy.”

Borrell responded to Orban’s comment during a press conference in Brussels, saying, “I understood that we have to send a signal, even if it is a symbolic signal, that being against the foreign policy of the European Union and disqualifying the policy of the European Union as the ‘party of war’ has to have some consequences.”

“We analyzed the statements and the actions implemented” by the Hungarian prime minister and foreign minister, the chief diplomat of the EU said. “I can say that all member states, with one single exception, were very much critical about this behavior,” he added.

“European Union policy is not a pro-war policy. We strongly rejected that,” Borrel said, adding, “the only one who is pro-war is Putin.”

The informal EU Council meetings of foreign and defense ministers were due to take place in Budapest from August 28 to 30, according to the EU council website, with Hungary currently holding the rotating European Union presidency.

Borrell’s decision comes after European Council President Charles Michel firmly hit back at Orbán’s claim that the EU has led a “pro-war policy” in a letter published last week.

“Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine is the victim exercising its legitimate right to self-defense. Russia is leading a war of aggression in blatant violation of international law, Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty in accordance with the UN Charter,” Michel wrote.

Orbán further upset EU lawmakers with his recent so-called “peace missions” at the beginning of July – meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, and most recently former US President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

The authoritarian Hungarian leader has sought to cast himself as a peacemaker in the Ukraine conflict, but his stance is at odds with most EU leaders, who have pledged unequivocal support for Ukraine as it attempts to repel Russia’s military effort.

In his letter to those leaders, Orban said that during the meetings there was a “general observation” that “the intensity of the military conflict” in Ukraine “will radically escalate in the near future.”

A letter signed by over 63 European lawmakers, addressed to the three EU chiefs, said Orban had “caused significant damage” through his meetings. They called on the bloc’s leaders to suspend Hungary’s voting rights in the European Council, arguing that “mere verbal condemnation” of Hungary has “no effect.”

With additional reporting from Niamh Kennedy, James Frater, Amy Cassidy and Jennifer Hansler

General Min Aung Hlaing, leader of Myanmar’s military junta, became the country’s interim president on Monday after figurehead leader Myint Swe was placed on medical leave, state media reported.

“The Interim President’s Office has sent a letter to the State Administration Council Office notifying it to delegate the responsibilities,” government broadcaster MRTV said Monday, referring to the junta council that governs Myanmar, which is chaired by Hlaing.

On Friday, the state-owned Global New Light of Myanmar reported that 73-year-old Swe has been suffering from “psychomotor retardation” and “malnutrition” since early 2023.

“As he cannot do normal daily activities including eating food, close medical treatments are being provided for the Pro Tem President under the arrangement of the State Administration Council,” the paper said.

The junta tapped Swe to serve as the country’s acting president in the aftermath of a February 2021 military coup that saw civilian leaders jailed — including disgraced Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi— and military loyalists installed in their place.

The junta first promised to hold elections within two years after seizing power – a deadline that has been repeatedly extended. The current state of emergency and military rule is due to expire this month.

Since the coup, the military has been battling a patchwork of local militias and pro-democracy groups in a devastating civil war, leading to significant losses of junta-controlled territory and troops.

At least 18.6 million people in Myanmar today need urgent humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“Escalating conflict across Myanmar is driving growing humanitarian needs, surging displacement, worsening food insecurity, grave human rights violations and deadly protection threats to civilians,” the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its 2024 Myanmar response plan, warning that humanitarian efforts in the country are severely underfunded.

“Without an urgent injection of funds aid agencies will soon be forced to make impossible choices about cuts to planned assistance that will risk the lives of millions of people in severe need,” the agency said.

It would be easy to dismiss this Sunday’s presidential election in Venezuela as a fait accompli. The country’s opposition movement is challenging Nicolas Maduro, a strongman who has ruled Venezuela since 2013 and has made clear he intends to keep doing so – saying last week that if he were not re-elected, Venezuela might face a “bloodbath.”

Maduro’s government controls all public institutions in Venezuela, and it has been accused of rigging votes in the past, most notably in 2017, when electoral authorities briefly showed the opposition had won a gubernatorial race – only to revert its decision in favor of the government candidate, an episode widely referred to as a glaring example of electoral fraud. In the run-up to this election, a new report by local NGO Laboratorio de Paz says there have been more than 70 arbitrary detentions since the election campaign formally began on July 4.

And yet, uncertainty is the mantra in Caracas these days. The opposition campaign has re-energized its bases, and the candidature of Edmundo González has attracted widespread support in Venezuela and abroad. There’s widespread agreement that Maduro’s government is facing its toughest electoral moment in the last 25 years

The stakes are high – both here and abroad.

A chance to rebuild Venezuela’s economic power

“On the ballot is how long it’ll take to fix Venezuela’s economy,” said Asdrubal Oliveros, founder of Caracas firm Ecoanalitica, in his weekly podcast on July 8.

Under Maduro, oil-rich Venezuela has suffered the worst economic crash in a peacetime country in recent history. Once the fifth-largest economy in Latin America, today Venezuela’s economy has shrunk to the equivalent of a medium-sized city, smaller than say, Milwaukee, according to data from the IMF.

After years of chronic shortages, most basic goods are widely available in Venezuela, but too expensive for most people to buy. Today, minimum wage is about three dollars per month, supplemented with the equivalent of $40 in government benefits, such as food stamps and subsidized gasoline, and more than eight out of 10 Venezuelans live below the poverty line, according to an independent survey by the Andres Bello Catholic University in Caracas.

While the opposition claims the crash is due to Maduro’s policies and chronic corruption, Maduro argues Venezuela has been the victim of “economic war,” including widespread US sanctions on oil, a crucial Venezuelan export, which were imposed in 2019, when Venezuela’s economy was already on the floor.

But a Gonzalez win could change that – particularly if the United States lifts its sanctions to welcome the democratic regime. Venezuela holds the largest oil reserves in the world. If elected, Gonzalez aims to make Venezuela “the energy hub of the Americas.”

Geopolitical fallout expected

On the international front, the vote’s outcome is expected to be felt across the Americas – including the United States – in the form of migration. As Venezuela’s economy has crumbled, around eight million Venezuelans have already fled their country, many of them scattered across South America.

A recent survey from Venezuelan pollster ORC Consultores found that more than 18% of the respondents plan to migrate from the country by the end of the year if Maduro wins.

On the other hand, a win by Gonzalez and the democratic opposition would be a historic event, swinging the geopolitical pendulum in Latin America and beyond.

The Maduro government is a staunch ally to China, Iran and Russia. Less than 1,400 miles from Miami, Caracas is often touted as a bridgehead for Russian President Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Washington’s backyard. Another regional ally, Cuba, currently receives free shipments of Venezuelan crude to sustain its industries.

Under Maduro, Venezuela has also grown increasingly isolated, quitting regional forums such as the Organization of American States, and its membership of the Mercosur, Latin America’s largest economic union, has been suspended.

Gonzalez, a twentieth-century diplomat who’s lived in Algiers, Brussels and Buenos Aires and speaks English and French on top of his native Spanish, would be expected to turn toward democratic governments in the region, including Washington, and work to rebuild international ties. He also plans to kindle ties with multilateral organizations such as the IMF, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, to bring in much-needed cash to subsidize the economy, at least in the short term, according to the opposition’s economic platform.

And that is, perhaps, the highest stake in Sunday’s election.

Recent years have been described as a crisis for democracy, from Brexit to the rise of neofascism in Europe; from eroding democracies in India, Turkey, the Philippines and all over the global south, to the rise of Donald Trump as US president and now reelection candidate.

But a new dawn in Caracas would be proof that representative democracy is still attractive enough to those who don’t enjoy it.

Palestinian factions including rivals Hamas and Fatah have signed an agreement on “ending division and strengthening Palestinian unity,” Chinese broadcaster CCTV said Tuesday, following a deal brokered by China.

The announcement followed reconciliation talks involving 14 Palestinian factions in Beijing starting Sunday, according to state media, which come as Israel wages war against militant group Hamas in Gaza and as China has sought to take up a role as a peace broker in the conflict.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the agreement was “dedicated to the great reconciliation and unity of all 14 factions.”

“The core outcome is that the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) is the sole legitimate representative of all Palestinian people,” Wang said, adding that “an agreement has been reached on post Gaza war governance and the establishment of a provisional national reconciliation government.”

It was unclear from Wang’s comments what role Hamas, which is not part of the PLO, would play, or what the immediate impact of any agreement would be. The talks were held as the future governance of Palestinian territories remains in question as Israel’s current leadership have vowed to eradicate Hamas, following the group’s October 7 terrorist attack.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is a coalition of parties that signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1993, and formed a new government in the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Fatah dominates both the PLO and the PA, the interim Palestinian government that was established in the Israeli-occupied West Bank after the 1993 agreement known as the Oslo Accords was signed. Hamas does not recognize Israel.

There is a long history of bitter enmity between Hamas in Gaza and Fatah. The two sides have tried – and failed – multiple times to reach an agreement to unite the two separate Palestinian territories under one governance structure, with a 2017 agreement quickly folding in violence.

The PA held administrative control over Gaza until 2007, after Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections in the occupied territories and expelled it from the strip. Since then, Hamas has ruled Gaza and the PA governs parts of the West Bank.

At a press conference Tuesday in Beijing, Hamas delegation representative Mousa Abu Marzook said they had reached an agreement to complete a “course of reconciliation,” while also using the platform in Beijing to defend the group’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel.

“We’re at a historic junction. Our people are rising up in their efforts to struggle,” Abu Marzook said, according to a translation provided by China’s Foreign Ministry, adding that the October 7 operation had “changed a lot, both in international and regional landscape.”

The agreement comes as Beijing – which has sought to increase its influence and ties in the Middle East in recent years – has presented itself as a leading voice for countries across the Global South decrying Israel’s war in Gaza and calling for Palestinian statehood.

Beijing has not explicitly condemned Hamas for its October 7 attack on Israel.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping in May decried “tremendous sufferings” in the Middle East and called for an international peace conference as leaders from Arab nations visit Beijing, even as observers have questioned the extent of Beijing’s geopolitical clout in a region where the US has long been a dominant power.

The agreement was also inked as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in the United States for a highly anticipated visit in which he will meet top US officials and address Congress.

Israel launched its military operations in Gaza following Hamas’ October 7 attack that killed more than 1,100 people and saw roughly 250 others kidnapped. Around 39,000 Palestinians have died in Israel’s war in Gaza that has triggered a mass humanitarian crisis and widespread destruction.

Hamas and Fatah signed a reconciliation agreement in Cairo in October 2017 under pressure from the Arab states, led by Egypt. Under the deal, a new unity government was supposed to take administrative control of Gaza two months later, ending a decade of rivalry that began when Hamas violently evicted the Palestinian Authority from Gaza in 2007.

But the deal’s lofty aspirations quickly collapsed. When Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah visited Gaza in March 2018, he was the target of an assassination attempt when a bomb detonated near his convoy. Hamdallah’s Fatah party immediately blamed Hamas for the attack.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The Philippines has announced plans to ban offshore gaming operators, targeting an industry that mostly caters to Chinese gamblers and has sparked growing alarm from law enforcement over its alleged connections to organized crime.

Known locally as POGOs, Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators have spawned across the country, both licensed and illicit, employing tens of thousands of Chinese and foreign nationals.

But in a state of the nation address Monday, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced a total shutdown of the industry.

“Effective today, all POGOs are banned,” Marcos said to a standing ovation from lawmakers as he underlined the growing concern in the Philippines over the explosion of the offshore casino industry.

“Disguising as legitimate entities, their operations have ventured into illicit areas furthest from gaming, such as financial scamming, money laundering, prostitution, human trafficking, kidnapping, brutal torture – even murder. The grave abuse and disrespect to our system of laws must stop,” Marcos added.

The ban comes as Marcos takes an increasingly hard line against Chinese-linked operations amid simmering diplomatic tensions between Manila and Beijing over their competing claims in the South China Sea.

But China’s government is likely to welcome the move. Gambling is banned in China – with the exception of Macao – and Beijing has recently clamped down on cross-border gambling, especially across Southeast Asia.

There are 46 licensed offshore gaming operators and dozens more illicit gambling hubs in the Philippines, according to the country’s gaming regulator, which Marcos has ordered to close by the end of the year.

The POGO sector emerged in the Philippines in 2016 under Marcos’ relatively China-friendly predecessor Rodrigo Duterte, who critics say turned a blind eye to suspected illicit activities as the industry brought billions of pesos to state coffers.

Since then, the Philippines has become a major hub for online gaming catering to tens of thousands of players based in China.

In recent years, Southeast Asia has seen a surge of online scam syndicates raking in huge profits from victims around the world, including in China and the United States. During the coronavirus pandemic, many illicit casinos pivoted to scams when visitors dried up as borders closed.

Many of those working for these scam syndicates are themselves victims of human trafficking.

Some POGOs are based in abandoned malls, while others are found in converted parking lots or cheap rented offices that have come under increasing scrutiny from authorities in Manila, who say many are fronts for scam centers and other crimes.

In March, more than 800 Filipinos, Chinese and other nationals were rescued in a police raid of an online romance scam center posing as a casino about 100 kilometers north of the capital, the official Philippine News Agency reported, citing local authorities.

Last month, the Chinese embassy in Manila said it appealed to the Philippines to ban POGO “to root out this social ill,” adding it had assisted Philippine authorities in shutting down five offshore gambling centers and repatriated nearly 1,000 Chinese citizens over the past year.

In March, China’s embassy in Singapore warned its citizens in the city state to avoid all forms of betting, reiterating that gambling overseas violates Chinese laws.

“Even if overseas casinos are legally opened, cross-border gambling by Chinese citizens is suspected of violating the laws of our country,” the embassy said in a statement.